Terrible that her friends didn’t get to pay proper respect. Shame on the family members that made that decision.

I don’t think I would have ever thought to put “make sure to bury me as a man” in my will, but maybe not being t/g I don’t need to think about those things. I will take extra precaution now though to specify the exact outfit I’d like to be wearing - I have some pranksters in the family that probably wouldn’t mind getting the last laugh…

And make someone you absolutely trust your executor. It’s a shame too many transgender people lose family and “friends” when they begin transitioning. It’s bad enough that transgender people need friends and allies who will support them in life. They shouldn’t have to have someone who will give them the same support in death.

I didn’t realize funerals served only one specific purpose. Shouldn’t they also be about showing respect for the departed? Apparently her parents didn’t think so. Because of their discomfort they decided to not only remember her as someone she wasn’t but to make her look the way she should look. Her parents couldn’t even acknowledge that she was a woman on her death certificate or in her obituary.

Sure, her friends can remember her the way they want, but her parents are making a real effort to make sure the official records reflect what they want rather than who she was.

Well, that’s not much of an at least. Maybe she never suspected her “family” would pull such a rude stunt (in which case, sure, lucky her for being too dead to care) but this is tantamount to desecration of a corpse. I, personally, would not mind if my corpse were dressed in a duck suit, bronzed, and mounted over the front doorway to NAMBLA headquarters (or maybe I would–note to self: update will), but most people would be fairly appalled at the thought that they’d have their gender switched to one contrary to their self-identification, put on display at Fisher and Sons Funeral Home (in a striped suit, no less!), and interred under the wrong name.

And now plenty of other people with less-than-ideal relationships with their next-of-kin have one more thing to worry about.

They can also serve as an insight into how much regard the living had for the life of the person who died. This isn’t a sad story so much because the family’s actions hurt Ms. Gable (she’s beyond hurt now) but because it’s an indication of how difficult her life must have been when she was still here.

Transgender here, disinvited from my own mother’s funeral explicitly because I am transgender. Ultimately, transphobia is about silencing and making invisible variations from expected expression of gender, at times lethally so, sometimes banally, and almost always with a petty cruelty. Fuck you and any other apologists for transphobia.

Yes, make a will, but you’ve got to have someone around who can enforce it in time. It’s a pretty narrow window any friend of hers was working with. It’s sad that her wishes weren’t respected, of course, but the best will in the world won’t do you much good for this stuff if you haven’t taken some time to really plan for the contingencies and have a trusted person who has the will to knock heads in an awful time for everyone.

I think you should look up the definition of “basic decency”. You’ll find that apologizing for the actions of this woman’s parents (who, if they hadn’t already, abrogated the right to be considered “family” when they showed a total lack of respect for who she was) don’t fit within it.

And, as an act of basic decency, you can drop the pretense that your defense of this woman’s parents is appropriate.

Edited to add: You seem to have very specific views regarding what purpose funerals serve and what is and isn’t appropriate. I find it strange that, in your view, it’s appropriate for the parents of this woman to use her funeral as an opportunity to humiliate her.